Distributor
termnetworkingvendors & products
A company that sells to resellers rather than to the organisations that use the equipment - the middle tier of two-tier distribution.
Invisible to most engineers and decisive for what they can actually buy. A distributor decides which products it will stock, finance and support in a given country, and a vendor's line card is theoretical until somebody local carries it. In markets with currency controls, import duty and long lead times, that decision is the difference between a product existing and a product being available. Distributors also run the credit: the reseller who installed your firewall was very likely financed by one.
Also known as: two-tier distribution, value-added distributor, vad